send to England to bombard their unfortified towns as they are bombarding ours. So we have decided to move all the English and French we can find to Gallipoli. Let them kill their own people as well as ours."
I told him that, granted that the circumstances were as he had stated them, he had grounds for indignation. But I called his attention to the fact that he was wrong; that he was accusing the Allies of crimes which they were not committing.
"This is about the most barbarous thing that you have ever contemplated," I said. "The British have a perfect right to attack a military headquarters like Gallipoli."
But my argument did not move Enver. I became convinced that he had not decided on this step as a reprisal to protect his own countrymen, but that he and his associates were blindly venting their rage. The fact that the Australians and New Zealanders had successfully effected a landing had aroused their most barbarous instincts. Enver referred to this landing in our talk; though he professed to regard it lightly, and said that he would soon push the French and English into the sea, I saw that it was causing him much concern. The Turk, as I have said before, is psychologically primitive; to answer the British landing at Gallipoli by murdering hundreds of helpless British who were in his power would strike him as perfectly logical. As a result of this talk I gained only a few concessions. Enver agreed to postpone the deportation until Thursday—it was then Sunday; to exclude women and children from the order, and to take none of the British and French who were then connected with American institutions.
